Photo: AP
This satellite image provided by NASA shows the fires in Brazil on Aug. 20, 2019. As fires raged in the Amazon rainforest, the Brazilian government on Thursday denounced international critics who say President Jair Bolsonaro is not doing. (NASA via AP)

PARIS (AP) — The Latest on the reaction to the fires in the Amazon (all times local):

2:30 p.m.

In a sharp escalation of tensions with Brazil, France is accusing President Jair Bolsonaro of having lied to French leader Emmanuel Macron and says it now opposes a trade deal with the South American bloc Mercosur because of his environmental back-peddling.

A statement from the Elysee Palace accused Bolsonaro of failing to respect his “commitments on the climate” and of failing to protect biodiversity and said that Macron “can only note that President Bolsonaro lied to him.”

The angry language follows a spat on Twitter between the two leaders, after Macron angered Bolsonaro by calling on G-7 nations to act for the Amazon being ravaged by wildfires.

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9:35 a.m.

Rarely have French President Emmanuel Macron and superstar soccer players including Cristiano Ronaldo been on the same page, but when it comes to the fires that are devastating the Amazon, they’re uniting in sounding the alarm.

PARIS (AP) — In a sharp escalation of tensions over fires ravaging the Amazon, France on Friday accused Brazil’s president of having lied to French leader Emmanuel Macron and threatened to block a European Union trade deal with South American states including Brazil.

The specter of possible economic repercussions for Brazil and its South American neighbors starkly illustrated how the Amazon is becoming a battleground between Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and increasingly critical Western governments alarmed that vast swathes of the rainforest are going up in smoke under his watch.

Having won support from other governments, but infuriated Bolsonaro, by putting the Amazon wildfires on the radar of world leaders gathering for a Group of Seven summit in France, Macron then further upped the stakes and the pressure with a bluntly-worded statement from his office Friday that took direct aim at Bolsonaro’s trustworthiness.

“In light of Brazil’s attitude these recent weeks,” the statement said, Macron “can only conclude that President Bolsonaro lied to him during the Osaka Summit” in June where governments agreed on the “urgent need” to tackle climate change, pollution and environmental destruction.

“The decisions and statements from Brazil these recent weeks show clearly that President Bolsonaro has decided to not respect his commitments on the climate, nor to involve himself on the issue of biodiversity.”

Bolsonaro: Countries use Amazon blaze to try to harm Brazil
The president admitted, however, fires have been criminal
Published in 23/08/2019 – 11:55 By Pedro Rafael Vilela Brasília

The wildfires in Brazil’s Amazon region might be used to harm the country’s agribusiness sector, said President Jair Bolsonaro today (Aug 22) during his weekly Facebook broadcast. He noted the government has worked to mitigate the problem and asked people to help report criminal activity in the area.

“Some countries seize opportunity to potentialize the criticism on Brazil and harm agribusiness, our economy, and place Brazil back in a subordinate position,” he stated.

The president criticized a foreign demonstrator who referred to the rain forest using the word “our.” “Now, a country—I won’t name it—was bold enough to refer to it as ‘our Amazon.’ It’s interested in owning a part of our Amazon one day,” he said.

Minutes after the transmission, Bolsonaro wrote a tweet mentioning a post by French President Emmanuel Macron about the wildfires in the Amazon, claiming the photo was not up-to-date. “I’m sorry to see that President Macro has sought to instrumentalize a domestic issue of Brazil and other countries sharing the Amazon forest for personal and political gains. The sensationalist tone with which he refers to the Amazon (also resorting to false photos) is not help at all in finding a solution to the problem. The Brazilian government is still open to dialog based on objective data and mutual respect. The French president’s suggestion—that Amazon-related matters should be discussed by the G7—without the participation of the countries in the region—brings back a colonialist mindset inappropriate in the 21st century,” the Brazilian president said.

Brazil’s President Aims To Destroy Amazon Rainforest, According To Leaked Documents

SIMON CATLING in NEWS
Published 20:20, Friday 23 August 2019 BST

As the Amazon rainforest continues to dominate the news, with large sections of it currently ablaze, leaked documents have revealed that Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has plans for the region that could further wreck its rich biodiversity and displace the indigenous people that live within it.

Opendemocracy reports that the leaked documents show that the Bolsonaro government plans to strategically occupy the Amazon region so as to prevent several conservation projects for the rainforest.

Among these is the Triple A project which, as The Independent reports, is a conservation effort led by the organisation Gaia Amazonas that aims to conserve 265 million square kilometers of jungle.

However, these plans look seriously under threat if this newly leaked information is successfully acted upon. Among the plans revealed is a desire to build within the area, which come from a meeting in February, where ministers met with local leaders to discuss building a bridge over the Amazon River in the city of Óbidos, a hydroelectric plant in Oriximiná, and the expansion of the BR-163 highway to the Suriname border.

Jair Bolsonaro claims ‘profound love’ for Amazon rainforest as criticism intensifies
President uses TV speech to criticise ‘disinformation’ about fire crisis, saying it cannot be used as pretext for sanctions

Tom Phillips Latin America correspondent
Fri 23 Aug 2019 21.03 EDT

Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, has professed to feeling “profound love and respect” for the Amazon as fires continued to rage in the world’s biggest tropical rainforest and criticism of his environmental policies intensified.

In a televised address to the nation – met with pot-banging protests in several Brazilian cities – Bolsonaro said he was “not content” with the situation in the Amazon and was taking “firm action” to resolve it by deploying troops to the region.

But the rightwing populist played down both the significance of the forest fires that have mushroomed into a major political and environmental crisis – as well as his administration’s responsibility for it.

“Forest fires exist in the whole world and this cannot serve as a pretext for possible international sanctions,” Bolsonaro said in his brief, scripted address.

Amazon fires: why ecocide must be recognised as an international crime

Simon Surtees says the burning Brazilian forest is redolent of the plot of Lord of the Flies; Stefan Simanowitz writes that it’s time ecocide joined genocide as a named crime; while John Charlton despairs at the race in aviation to fly longer and faster

Letters
Fri 23 Aug 2019 11.41 EDT

Eliane Brum’s passionate attack on the Amazon clearances is well made (In the burning Amazon, all our futures are now at stake, 23 August). In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, the war between Ralph and Jack leads to the burning of the jungle. The boys are rescued by a naval crew attracted by the smoke and flames. But it is worth noting that Golding had to be persuaded by his editor to change the ending, which was considered a bit bleak for the 1950s, when it was written. He would have been quite happy for readers to take in the consequences of their selfishness and stupidity; the destruction of the place where they live. How he must be chuckling now.
Simon Surtees
London

n 1944, Winston Churchill described German atrocities in Russia as “a crime without a name”. Later that year, the term “genocide” was coined. Today the Amazon rainforest – the lungs of the world – is ablaze, with thousands of fires deliberately lit by land-grabbers keen to clear the forest for logging, farming and mining. This destruction, which has increased massively since Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s deregulated deforestation, threatens an area that is home to about 3 million species of plants and animals and 1 million indigenous people.

In order to stop such wanton destruction in Brazil and around the world, it is surely time to recognise ecocide – destruction of the environment or ecosystem – as an international crime. It should not be necessary to name something for it to become real but, as with genocide, a word can help encompass the enormity of a horror that might otherwise be too great to imagine.
Stefan Simanowitz
London